What if you
could start over?

Based on
the novel by Armistead Maupin and using characters from the famed anime
by Rumiko Takehashi, TALES OF THE CITY 1/2 is about a group of young
and queer Asian Americans living in post-Stonewall San Francisco. The
novel also becomes a sequel to the acclaimed anime series Ranma 1/2
in which readers find out what happens to the other characters after
the long awaited wedding of main character Ranma Saotome and his supposed
love Akane Tendo.

After discovering
that his former boyfriend is about to marry a woman he does not love,
Ranma 1/2's confused character RYOGA HIBIKI escapes to San Francisco
where he befriends openly gay Korean-Japanese journalist RYAN HITOMI.
Hitomi's group of eclectic queers includes flamboyant Filipino MARTIN
VENTURA, the realist bear BARRY FERGUSON, San Francisco State University
professor and self-acclaimed Asian male afficionado TYLER STONEBROOK,
club queen DEVIN LANCASTER and the bold and brash machismo KERRY KWOK.

Meanwhile,
another Ranma 1/2 character amazon SHAMPOO CHEN also escapes her failures
in Tokyo by becoming a successful student at the University of California,
Berkeley in the US. In her attempts to forget about her American past,
Chen has put away her bonboris and in exchange for a new life at Berkeley's
conservative Christian sorority Kappa Alpha Omicron and a future with
her boyfriend BENJAMIN PHAM. However, Shampoo's plans for the future
are shaken when the breathtakingly gorgeous lesbian student activist
JANE DUNWAY makes a pass at her, leaving her to amidst confusion and
acceptance of her affection for women.

As for Ryoga's
former lover RANMA SAOTOME, his relationship with his wife AKANE TENDO
is on the rocks when her former girlfriend and his former fiance UKYO
KUONJI returns to Tokyo.

"East
MeetsWest"

(as found on the back of Tales of
the City book by Armistead Maupin) First published on August 8, 1974 as
a column in the The San Francisco Chronicle, Armistead Maupin's Tales of the
City attracted a devoted worldwide following. Through the lovelorn tenants of
a San Francisco apartment house. Maupin takes the reader into a brave new world
of laundromat Lotharios, cutthroat debutantes and Jockey shorts dance contests.
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, this cunningly observed comedy - and
the five novels - which succeeded it - offer an unprecedented portrait of the
agonies and absurdies of urban life in the 20th Century. Tales of the City has
attracted a worldwide following for being the first breakthrough literature
about homosexuality in San Francisco. Now celebrating its 25th anniversary,
the book and its five sequels focuses on the lives of several San Franciscans,
both gay and straight, in a decade where viewpoints of morality and sexuality
intertwined and a brand new urban culture, the gay life, finally emerged and
attained acceptable respect in mainstream society.

Likewise, Ranma1/2 was an
acclaimed worldwide phenomenon anime who also introduced queer visibility to
the mainstream conservative Asian audience. Written by Rumiko Takehashi for
the manga Shonen Sunday in 1974, the story is centred on Ranma, a highly skilled
teenage martial artist, who is accidentally cursed while training in China with
his father Genma. Unless he finds a cure, cold water transforms Ranma into a
female version of himself, and hot water reverses this. Not only that, but shortly
afterwards, Ranma's father introduced him to his old friend, Soün, and
his three daughters, and asked to pick one for his wife. A large amount of the
stories are based on martial arts based combat (or where martial arts plays
an important part), often with weird styles or in strange situations. Also,
there are several girls interested in Ranma, and several guys interested in
Ranma's fiancee, Akane, and since they are all martial artists, this leads to
some 'interesting' situations.Ranma 1/2 is a gender bending, wacky (but sometimes
serious) martial arts comedy. The anime hit popularity in the 1980s when it
was dubbed into English and over 500,000 doujinshi has been sold internationally.
The anime has also been the center of a variety of yaoi and yuri fanfics including
"RRyaoi" between main character Ranma Saotome and his rival Ryoga
HIbiki and "Altered Destinies" between Akane Tendo, Ranma's main fiancee
and busty Chinese amazon Shampoo Chen, Akane's rival.

"Tales of the City 1/2"
is the harmonious unification of both mediums. It is an ongoing altraverse in
which the death of Ranma and Akane's parents, who are the proponents to the
anime's chaos, gives the characters a chance at last to rediscover themselves,
reshape their lives, and find love at last. The fanfic also deals with lives
of and issues dealing with queer Asian Americans in their efforts to find their
identities in a culture that mostly objectifies and isolates them.

I hope that the fanfic provides the
viewpoint of gay Asian Americans, which was lacking in Tales, and the issues
and struggles they deal with in being the double minority.But most of all, I
hope that you enjoy the work as much as I have enjoyed writing it.